Johnson: Book industry's year in review rife with controversy

Moby Lives

Anyway you look at it, 2001 has to be regarded as one of the book industry's most bizarre years in recent memory. Or distant memory, for that matter.

Dennis Loy

Johnson

MobyLives

more Johnson columns

The weirdness started in March, when Jaime Clarke offered a bounty of $1,000 to find out who wrote the mean but anonymous review of his novel ''We're So Famous'' in Publishers Weekly.

In April the years-in-the-making lawsuit by the American Booksellers Association and 26 independent bookstore owners against Barnes & Noble and Borders -- accused of getting secret discounts from publishers and distributors in violation of Federal law -- came to an abrupt end when the 87-year-old judge said even if the ABA made its case (which most accounts said it was doing) damages would be too difficult to estimate. He threw out the damages claim, making it fairly pointless for the ABA to continue. They settled for an amount roughly equal to their legal expenses.

There were other trials, too. In one, later overturned, Alice Randall was blocked from publishing her parody of ''Gone With the Wind,'' ''The Wind Done Gone.'' And Random House sued tiny Rosetta Books for publishing e-book versions of Kurt Vonnegut and William Styron novels. Random said they own all versions of the texts; a Federal judge said they don't.

Then there were the historians. In June, Pulitzer Prize-winner Joseph Ellis was discovered to have been lying for decades to students and interviewers about his personal history, claiming everything from heroism on the football fields of his high school to the killing fields of Vietnam; he'd never set foot on either. His book, ''Founding Brothers,'' nonetheless stayed on the bestseller list.

In July, David McCullough was discovered to have apparently made up a Thomas Jefferson quote that appeared in his bestselling hagiography, ''John Adams.'' McCullough deemed the quote so important it was highlighted on the book jacket and used as a chapter title. Subsequently, journalist Philip Nobile revealed some significant errors in McCullough's previous bestseller, ''Truman.'' There was little fuss, however. ''John Adams'' stayed on the bestseller list.

In September, Michael Bellesiles, already under heavy fire from Charlton Heston and the NRA for his ''Arming America,'' which posited that guns weren't so omnipresent in colonial America -- meaning that maybe the 2nd Amendment did refer to arming militias and not average citizens -- came under still more withering fire when several prominent historians found apparent mistakes in his research. Bellesiles hasn't responded to all the charges yet, but his book isn't on the bestseller list.

Other alarming events along the way: a $7 million advance to Jack Welch; $8 million to Hilary Clinton; and $10, 11 or 12 million, depending on whom you believe, to Bill Clinton. None are expected to make back the money. The only book to result so far is Welch's, whose ''Jack: Straight From the Gut,'' most critics agree, is a dud. But it's on the bestseller list.

Meanwhile, in October, author Fay Weldon admitted she took money to feature Bulgari jewelry in her novel, ''The Bulgari Connection.'' Most major media reviewed it, and publisher Atlantic/Grove says it sold well.

Scary bits: Several of our most esteemed newspapers decided to drastically reduce or drop their book sections. The New York Times shrunk theirs by two pages. The editor said no one complained.

Finally, there was Jonathan Franzen. His ''The Corrections'' was greeted by praise from, it seemed, nearly every important critic in America. Then he was chosen for Oprah's Book Club, which usually results in sales of 400,000- 500,000 more books. But Franzen said he had problems with Winfrey's readership -- mostly women. He was afraid it would put men off.

Clearly, they were sexist comments, and made some -- like me -- suspicious of racism, too. But did anyone question him on this? Nope. It was deemed a ''highbrow -- lowbrow'' disagreement, and the industry gave Franzen the National Book Award for novel of the year. ''The Corrections'' is still on the bestseller list.

The year was not without its hopeful moments, however. Jaime Clarke reminded us that writers should always stand behind their writing. This was brave -- he'll probably pay for that next time. Alice Randall's muzzling by an Atlanta judge was overturned. Vonnegut and Styron saw their rights upheld, too. And in San Francisco, one of the newspapers that had reduced its books section, The Chronicle, got so many reader complaints it put the book section back the way it was.